Page 12 of The Merciless Ones
“Yes, Karmoko,” I say, respectfully using the Hemairan word for “teacher”. “I will. But I have one question before I go.”
I inch closer to her, turning my back to the room so that the others won’t see my lips moving. Thankfully, it’s so loud now, what with all the generals talking over each other, that even the most determined eavesdropper will find it hard to hear above the din. “Have you ever heard of any alaki being able to see the memories of others?” I whisper.
White Hands stares directly at me. “You mean you?”
Trust her to immediately cut to the heart of the matter. I sigh. “Yes, I mean me.”
“I’ve never heard of it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. You’re the Nuru. Perhaps it’s your divine gift.”
I blink. “My divine gift?”
“The mothers have already blessed you with so many; what’s another one to add to the collection?”
“But why would I develop a divine gift now, of all times?”
“Melanis received hers as she regenerated last night. Not even one full day of freedom and her wings have already returned.” White Hands taps her lips. “Perhaps it’s a sign – the mothers are growing in power, which of course means you are as well. But you don’t think that, do you?” She frowns down at me, and I look away, ashamed.
“I can never tell whether something is real or just in my mind,” I whisper, shame flushing my cheeks as I force the words out. “My thoughts are always turning on me. Always taking me back there—”
“To the cellar – the dismemberment?” White Hands finishes.
I nod. “There’s also the field where they burned me. Hanged me there too… And drowned me.” I close my eyes against the painful memories, then inhale to steady myself.
When I open them again, White Hands is staring at me. “But what you saw the night prior – the memory you experienced, was it any of those?” White Hands seems genuinely curious.
“No, but—”
“There you have it.” White Hands places her hand on my shoulder. The coolness of her sharply clawed white gauntlets soothes my tensed muscles. “It was not a cruel trick of your mind – you truly experienced what you experienced.”
She takes a step closer. “You have to start believing in yourself, Deka, in your own mind. Your own mental soundness. If not, others will take advantage of you, turn your uncertainty into a weapon. Learn to trust in yourself. That is one of the primary marks of a great leader. A general.”
She says this so meaningfully, I blink. “You think I could be a general?” Even the thought is a dream I’ve never dared reach for.
Yes, I’m the Nuru; yes, I’ve already led armies to victory; but all the generals of the Gilded Ones are Firstborn, women with eons more knowledge and experience than me. While I don’t doubt my combat abilities, I’m not arrogant enough to think I’d withstand even one of them in battle without relying on my voice and other divine gifts to seize the advantage.
In a fair and equal fight, any single Firstborn would annihilate me within seconds.
White Hands, however, doesn’t seem to be considering any of that. “Look around,” she says, gesturing at the others. “You’re already here, in the war room. And you already have the victories under your belt. The mantle is waiting. All you have to do is believe in yourself enough to take it.”
She squeezes my shoulder. “Trust yourself, Deka. You aren’t the naive girl you once were.”
I genuflect again. “My thanks, Karmoko,” I say. “Deepest thanks.”
But White Hands is already striding off. “Ah, General Beima,” she says, waving at the stout Firstborn. “A word, if you will.”
I smile at her swift retreat – White Hands has never been one for sentimentality. But then, neither have I – at least, not any longer.
I turn to exit the room alongside the others, only to stop quickly when there’s another movement in the glass cell under my feet. The figure from before has moved into the centre of the room. It’s a man, his body dark and shrunken, open sores on his shoulders visible through the thick, wavy glass. I stare at him, a peculiar emotion sweeping over me: not quite disgust or guilt but a little mix of both. How the mighty have fallen. The beard that now mats his face was once immaculately trimmed and braided with actual gold threads, and those tattered robes were made of the most obscenely expensive fabrics. That’s all gone now, along with the multiple rings on his fingers and the jewels on his toes. All that’s left of Gezo, the mighty emperor of Otera, is this doddering, vacant husk of a man whose empty gaze is staring up into mine.
A thin green vine slithers across his shoulder, its moist, eagerly throbbing black-petalled flowers snapping for his skin. I shudder. That vine is a blood-eater, a carnivorous plant that originated in the Bloom. Tangles of more blood-eater vines writhe across the walls lining Gezo’s cell, though I don’t know how they made their way in. The waters of the lake surround the small, dark room; it should be impenetrable. And yet, there the blood-eaters are… It’s all I can do not to gag when the plant on his shoulder sinks those petals into his flesh, its tendrils snapping eagerly as it gorges on the blood.
“And to think,” Asha muses grimly, coming to stand beside me, “this is the same man who nearly destroyed our kind.”
“He’s nothing now, just a shadow,” I say.
“A dying one,” Adwapa adds, nodding at the black veins striping the former emperor’s body, the sores on his shoulders where the blood-eaters have taken bites. “It’s blood poisoning. He hasn’t got much time left.”
A vague sadness passes over me at the thought, though I don’t know why. Gezo was the worst sort of enemy, the type who pretends he’s your friend. But as I walk out the door, I can’t help but take one last look back at him – at this haunting spectre of a man who once held my fate, as well as everybody else’s, in the palm of his hand, and tried to crush us all and failed.